Marissa Nadler

Box of Cedar; 2011

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"Puppet Master", the sixth song on the new album by Marissa Nadler, opens as a lonely country shuffle. Over a muted beat and a quiet circular guitar line, Nadler again pines for a lover who's left, something she's done about as well as any young American songwriter during the last decade. "Cobalt and sea, come back to me," she sings, her loneliness delivered like a ghost's whisper. "I'll never do you wrong." But 90 seconds in, "Puppet Master" takes an unexpected turn, adding vibraphone and transitioning to a near-waltz that suggests the Ronnettes, just slowed and simplified. Nadler's experience sublimates into a puppet's innocence: "Lately, all I want is you," she offers, sweetly and almost cheerily. "Puppet master, see me through."

Nadler volleys between mourning and flirting on "Puppet Master", the centerpiece of her first album for own label, Box of Cedar. It's a telling move, too: Her looks at love have grown increasingly intricate, subtle and-- most importantly-- realistic since her 2004 debut. Her songs are now much too considered to be only elegiac, too complex to be simply sad. That idea translates musically as well. Just like "Puppet Master", the best songs here make slight and unexpected detours. With the help of producer Brian McTear, the songs fit together naturally; whether above synthesizers or acoustic guitar, Nadler never sounds forced. "In Your Lair, Bear", for instance, is an opening masterstroke, a bold six-minute move that patiently rises over its duration. Drums, strings, electric guitars, and harmonies enter and exit in turn; Nadler's two characters use each other, seasonally wearing one another like amulets or accessories. "I took you home, and I crashed you," she sings at the end, subverting her general role as the one demolished by love. She assumes the power just to admit she's abused it.

Nadler's songs are frank, careful examinations of all the ways a relationship can grow cold. Her music sounds as somber as ever here, and her distant air remains one of the most absolutely haunting things you're likely to find anywhere near indie rock. But she's grown past solipsism to become more of a reporter on the battles she's seen. During "Alabaster Queen", she admits giving over to a someone who is nothing but trouble, excusing the "women wistful wanting" with a deliberateness that foretells how badly this will all end. For the emotional minefield "Baby I Will Leave You in the Morning", Nadler's protagonist preemptively asks for forgiveness before she hits the road, where she'll drink to sleep-- most likely, with another lover. She doesn't blame the despair of the gorgeously pained "Wind Up Doll" on the dead husband, and she doesn't badmouth the lover who doesn't reciprocate her eternal, exhausting feelings during "Wedding". She just shares those stories in songs that are as gorgeous as they are elliptical and intriguing.

Nadler's diligently expanded her reach as a writer and arranger during the past decade, culminating so far in the expansive sounds of 2009's Little Hells and the subtly twisting forms of this new eponymous album. But she's part of that caste of American songwriters who don't make music grand enough to be Joanna Newsom or Bon Iver, brazen enough to be Fleet Foxes. Rather, her contemporaries might be considered Richard Buckner, Doug Paisley, Alela Diane, and Bill Callahan-- really good songwriters who can get lost in the current indie climate, or, as Mike Powell wrote about Callahan earlier this year, folks who might "have nothing to add to the general conversation about music in 2011." These are writers sitting on terrific strings of records, yet remaining relatively unnoticed. Once again, though, Nadler has maintained and etched out yet another album of cold, stony truths about the ways we love, or fail to.